They climbed steadily for twenty minutes before Floyd led them off the trail. They skirted the top of a cliff, crossed several ridges, and passed through a narrow defile. Although Floyd seemed to find his way with ease, Kathleen saw neither a track nor trail-blazings on the trees.
The wind rose as they neared the summit. Kathleen lifted her face to the cool gusts and drew the clean air into her lungs. The breeze tugged at her hat. Above her head the cloud of smoke grew thicker and blacker. She feared for the Estate, hoping Charles and the others had stopped the advance of the flames before they reached the great house.
Jeb dismounted beneath a pine. “I’ll have a look,” he said, moving cautiously forward. Floyd leaned over his saddle horn, fingering the leather braid on his holster while his eyes followed his younger companion. Kathleen slumped exhausted in the saddle. Are we there? she wondered. She did not know how much longer she could go on.
A dead spike branched from the pine at the level of her face. She sat up. I might be able to, she thought. She gripped the horse with both legs and leaned far to the side until the branch jabbed her hair. When she twisted her head her hat fell to the ground to lay partly hidden behind a clump of ferns.
She sat upright and held her breath. Would Jeb notice?
“It’s all right, come on.” Jeb’s voice. He stood waiting for them several yards ahead. Kathleen let out her breath in a long sigh. Perhaps he wouldn’t discover the missing hat. Yet whether he did or not, she knew the hat was a forlorn hope. Who would possibly ride this way? She felt better, though, for she had done something, no matter how futile.
Floyd swung about, grabbed her horse’s reins and led her through a screen of brush and down a steep embankment into a ravine shaped, she thought, like the cornucopia on the table at the Estate, narrow at this end, sloping downhill as it curved and broadened for a distance of some two hundred feet. A few pines tossed in the wind, but most of the growth consisted of stunted holly, laurel, and other mountain shrubs.
She felt trapped. The sides of the ravine rose steeply to the height of a man at this end, three times as high farther along. They walled her in, cut her off from the world. At the distant mouth of the ravine she could see no trees, no shrubs, only the black sky, as though a cliff thwarted escape in that direction. She was isolated, alone, a prisoner on an island in the sky.
Floyd tied the horses on the edge of a patch of grass. Only then did she notice the lean-to. Tree limbs which had been laid along the wall of the canyon were artfully concealed by cut pine boughs placed on top. Jeb came from inside to stand at the entrance.
Floyd walked back to lift her from the horse, but before he could Kathleen bent forward, threw her leg over the saddle on the opposite side and slid down. One foot landed on a loose stone and, trying to keep her balance, she fell, straining against her bindings.
Pain shot up her arms and across her shoulders as she sprawled on the ground. Stones cut into her back, making Kathleen realize her dress was torn.
She heard a snicker. Floyd’s face, sweaty and soot-stained, loomed over her. He lifted his campaign hat in mock deference. “May I be of assistance, ma’am?” he asked. His phlegmy voice sounded as though a portion of every whiskey he had ever drunk remained in his throat.
She stared, unable to speak or move while he knelt beside her and grasped her under the arms. She found a footing and struggled upright, twisting away as his hands slid forward under her breasts. She tried to run but he gripped her about the waist and pulled her to him. She whimpered when she felt the shock of his body on hers.
“Be patient,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait just a little while.” He shoved her ahead of him into the lean-to.
“The young lady doesn’t seem to care for you,” Jeb snorted. “Cut off the gag. She can make all the noise she wants, there’s no one to hear.” Jeb’s gaze lingered on her face and hair. She stiffened. He’s noticed a difference, she thought. Will he remember the hat? He frowned, then yawned and turned away.
She sat with her back on the dirt bank, watching Floyd slowly take out his knife. He held the weapon pointed down at her while he looked from the mottled blade to her eyes then down the length of her body. At last he cut the cloth at the back of her head. Her lips ached and she could feel the bitter taste of blood in her mouth.
The two men squatted at the entrance of the lean-to rolling cigarettes, letting the smoke out with long relaxed breaths.
“A few hours’ sleep?” Jeb asked. “What do you say?” This was the first time, Kathleen realized, he had deferred to the older man.
Floyd nodded. “And some hot grub. A campfire’s safe what with all the smoke.”
After they laid bedrolls across the entrance Jeb brought a rope from the shadowed interior of the camp and bound Kathleen’s feet. She stared away from him, passive.
She dozed fitfully as the men slept, dreamed she forced her legs through clinging waist-high smoke, her steps slow and labored as though she ran in deep water. All the while, in her dream, Floyd’s yellow teeth grinned at her.
Just as she found a deeper, untroubled sleep, Floyd’s spluttering snores wakened her. She tried to think, to plan, but found questions without answers. How could she escape? Why had they taken her? To lure Charles from the Estate? Josiah’s scheme to admit Kathleen to the Estate was being repeated in dead earnest.
The two men stretched themselves awake. While they started the fire they spoke in whispers too low for her to hear. After the fire blazed, Jeb strode from the camp, leaving Floyd busy with a black kettle and pot. She saw the older man’s eyes return time and again to where she lay.
Finally he came and knelt beside her. She felt his hand slide along her side to the swell of her hip, linger on her thigh. She forced herself to be still despite the tensing of her body.
“Wind’s blowing the fire this way.” Jeb. Floyd’s hand jerked away and she heard him swear under his breath. “No danger yet,” Jeb went on, “but the trail to the Estate may not be passable.”
“Guess we did a good job when we started her.”
“Too good, maybe,” Jeb said. “Whichever of us goes down tonight might have to take the long way round.”
“Who goes back to the Estate, Sergeant?” Floyd asked. Was there a challenge in the “Sergeant”? Kathleen wondered.
“Let chance decide. Drawing lots all right by you?”
“Agreed.”
Floyd broke four twigs into uneven lengths. He held them to his hand so the visible ends were the same length. “The man who gets the shortest stays,” he said.
Jeb selected one of the sticks. “Not the shortest, not the longest,” he said. He took the remaining three sticks in his hand and let the bearded man choose.
Floyd grunted with satisfaction. “I stay,” he said, flipping the short twig on the fire. Kathleen knew a sinking sensation in her stomach. When Jeb left, she would be alone with Floyd.
“Let’s eat,” Jeb said. After untying her wrists he handed Kathleen a tin plate filled with watery, lumpy globs of food. Stew, she found, with a few chunks of meat among the potatoes. She coughed as she washed the meal down with thick, bitter coffee. When they finished Jeb motioned Floyd aside where he talked earnestly, nodding his head from time to time in Kathleen’s direction. Floyd held both hands before him in a gesture of innocence.
Jeb returned to tie the binding on her hands. “I know what’s wrong,” he said. He gripped her chin between his thumb and fingers and looked into her eyes. “Where’s your hat?” he demanded.
“L-lost.”
“Lost? When?”
“I’m not sure. I think at the place we hid while Captain Worthington went by.” She cringed away from him, afraid, but he did not strike her. He dropped his hand and without a word pulled his own hat low on his forehead and, lifting his saddle, walked toward the horses. Don’t go, she pleaded under her breath, don’t go. Her only protector, although an unlikely one, was leaving.
After a few minutes Kathleen heard his horse scramble up the embankment. She was left with Floyd in the deepening twilight. The only noise was the chirruping of the cicadas.
Floyd sat by the fire, whittling. Every so often the dying blaze flared and the light glinted on the blade of his knife. He seemed to have forgotten her presence, but she knew he had not, knew he was waiting, thinking, imagining. What would he do?
Night came quickly. One moment the trees were etched against the sky with each branch distinct, the next they appeared as outlines a shade darker than the night itself. Kathleen saw Floyd stoop to light a cigarette from the embers. He withdrew into the darkness so his squat figure was visible only when he pulled on his smoke.
She could not just lie and wait. She must act, try to get away. By pushing with her feet and at the same time hunching her body she found she could move. Foot by foot she slid her back deeper into the lean-to with her hands and arms scraping on the dirt beneath her. Her head struck cut branches which closed off the end of the lean-to. She turned, careful to make no noise to alert Floyd, shifted her body so her feet pressed on the obstruction. She drew her legs back and pushed. The branches shifted but held. She inched forward, pushed again. The limbs fell sideways with a clatter. Had Floyd heard?
Kathleen squirmed into the opening. Halfway. A little more. There, she was outside. A hand gripped her hair and she screamed. Floyd had been waiting for her. He scooped her up with one arm under her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and carried her to the campfire where he laid her on the ground.
“I reckon the Sergeant’s about halfway down the mountain by now,” he said. He poked the fire with a stick, making it flare. She smelled smoke but could not be sure whether it was from the campfire or from the blaze threatening the Estate.
Suddenly she was calm. She seemed to see and hear with a heightened awareness. She saw the glowing fire, heard the cicadas, felt the night air cool on her bare skin where her dress had torn, smelled the acrid odor of the fire.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“To who? The Captain? You? As for the Captain, we’re going to arrange a meeting with him, just him alone with the two of us, me and Jeb, and we’re going to kill him.”
“Without warning? Without giving him a chance?”
“Yes, like the Indian friends would do to one of us.”
“Why? What do you have against him?”
“What happened in Kansas—the killing, the phony court-martial, all the rest.”
“The coffin on the porch of the Estate, the fire on the lawn before that…they were your doing.” The pieces were falling into place. The Committee, the letters about Michael’s death.
“Not me and Jeb. The two who came from the Committee before us. Jeb and me, we don’t waste time with play-acting. We waited until after the big shindig, the ball, until they were all tired and not paying heed, then we set the fire.” He threw his cigarette onto the embers. “Enough talk. What you and me have to do don’t include passing the time of day. I think you can guess what I have in mind, Miss Clarissa, ma’am.”
“Clarissa?” They thought she was Clarissa. They had found her in Clarissa’s room. Hope mingled with another emotion. Resentment? Once more someone had wanted Clarissa, not her.
The knife gleamed and she felt the binding on her ankles being cut. Her legs, stiff and sore, were free. She heard Floyd lay something near the campfire. His belt and gun?
“I’m not—” she began. His face touched hers and she twisted away from the scratching of his beard. “Stop,” she said, her voice hoarse and urgent, “I’m Kathleen, I’m—”
His hands moved up her legs beneath her dress, rough, demanding. Went to her knees and above in an impatient caress. She squirmed under him, arms still tied, tried to kick him, but his short body was thick and hard and his weight pinned her to the ground. She fought while he pulled at her with his hands. He grunted, seeming to find pleasure in her struggle. She heard her stockings rip, felt his bands on her flesh. She sobbed, without hope, and her body slumped.
As if from a great distance, she heard his triumphant laugh.